Friday, March 27, 2009

Career Achievement Awards For The Silent Era (films released prior to August 1, 1927)

PICTURE:The General

ACTOR: Charles Chaplin

ACTRESS: Lillian Gish

DIRECTOR: D.W. Griffith

Maybe this is what the Academy should have done to honor the three decades of movies that preceded the Oscars, instead of what they did do, which was to allow thousands of movies to molder away in the vaults as if they had never existed, until many of them did in fact no longer exist, having turned to liquified film and ashes long ago.

With the exception of The General, which I consider to be the best movie made before Charles Chaplin's City Lights in 1931, the Katie-Bar-The-Door career achievement awards are for a body of work accomplished prior to August 1, 1927 (the cutoff date for the first Oscars) rather than for a specific film. I'll explain my choices—next week—along with a brief essay on the problem of watching silent movies and finally a selection of "must-see" films from the Silent Era.

7 comments:

Mister Parker
said...

Hmm. I'm not sure the first sentence of the second paragraph makes any sense. In case you can't decipher it, all I'm really trying to say is that the award for Picture is for one movie only and the awards for Actor, Actress and Director are for a bunch of movies.

Sometimes I like to borrow from the Mouth O' The Mule's book, How To Baffle Through Strange Syntax.

I'm glad someone addressed the issue of the exploding filmstock; my weekend was lost, and I didn't read this until this AM. And immediately leapt to add my two cents.

btw, Bryan Garner informs in his Modern American Usage that "Leapt" and "leaped" are both acceptable past-tense and past-participial forms for the verb "leap." In frequency of use, the two are now neck-and-neck in modern print sources. Traditonalists prefer leapt . . . .

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What are the Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards?

Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.

To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:

The Silent Oscars

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Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?